The Texan Podcast - 88th Session Kickoff: The Texan Reporters Q&A

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup This special panel was a Q&A discussion with our reporting team — Brad Johnson, Holly Hansen, Hayden Sparks, Matt Stringer, and Kim Roberts. Enjoy this content? Be sure to subscribe for similar podcasts and The Texan’s Weekly Roundup — a podcast released every Friday that brings you the latest news in Texas politics.

Howdy, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here. Welcome to a special edition of the Texans podcast, where we play back a panel discussion with lawmakers that we hosted at our 88th session kickoff event on January 24th. This special panel was a Q&A discussion with our reporting team, Brad Johnson, Holly Hansen, Hayden Sparks, Matt Stringer, and Kim Roberts. We hope you enjoy listening to this conversation and be sure to subscribe at thetexan.news to always be the first to have an insider's look at Texas politics and policymaking. Okay, folks, we are going to chat ourselves as the team here at The Texan. My name is Mackenzie DeLulo. I'm the senior editor here at The Texan. We are so

honored to have y'all here today. It's wonderful. I know Brad earlier talked about four years ago if we would have been able to say that we'd be here with y'all specifically having an. So thank you very much. We are going to talk with our team about all things the legislative session. Feel free to ask us questions as well. I do want to point out Rob Lausch is our wonderful assistant editor is in the back. He's very hard to miss. So if you have a question for Rob, please go to the back and make sure you line up there to ask us a question. I'll say right off the bat, we will not take policy positions, but we're happy to answer anything Texas politics, whether it be procedural for the session, after the election, if you have something political there to ask us about, we're happy to chat all things politics. So do line up there with Rob. I'll start us off by asking our panel of distinguished reporters a few questions. First of all, I want to go down the line. We'll start with you, Brad, your name and what beats you cover at the Texan.

Brad Johnson. I cover fiscal policy, energy, and the grid, which we'll have a panel later on in the day on that. The city of Austin is kind of a side beat. And then just state politics generally, which covers a lot, as I'm sure you'll see in these panels. I think that's about it. Holly Hanson. There we go. Holly Hanson, and I am a regional reporter, so I'm reporting from Houston and Harris County, and that can run the gamut as far as topics go. But incidentally, as living in that area, I do report a lot on criminal justice issues, but also education issues and anything else that has to do with Houston and Harris County.

Hayden Sparks. I realize I'm introducing you all too, but might as well do a doubly. Hayden Sparks. There we go. Hayden Sparks, and I cover border security at the Texan. I also came to Austin by way of Dallas, so I cover Dallas area news, and as Holly does, I cover criminal justice issues as well. And then it's all hands on deck covering the Texas legislature. Matthew Stringer. My name is Matt Stringer and I'm from West Texas. I cover all things arising in that great region of our state. And I cover the Texas Senate for the 88th session of the Texas legislature, as well as major court issues, decisions facing our state, some federal issues, and also Second Amendment issues.

And the lovely Kim Roberts. Hello, I'm Kim Roberts. I live in Tarrant County, so I tend to cover Tarrant County and things in the DFW region. I also have covered the high-speed rail project quite a bit, and I also write on First Amendment lawsuits that arise here and there. Wonderful. So we are about two weeks into this 88th legislative session. Right off the bat, things are different. We don't have a lot of a track record here so far between the House and the Senate of what is different, but so far with what we've seen, how is this session different than say the last couple of sessions most recently in terms of how the legislature is approaching policy issues,

whether it be the lack of conflict or a lot of conflict, what's different so far this legislative session? Brad, we'll start with you. I think the biggest difference of this legislature is the massive historic treasury surplus that the state has. Normally, the state can tell all these different people who want funding for specific projects, whether it's infrastructure, property tax cuts, you name it, anything, normally they can just say, no, we don't have enough money. It's real easy. This year is not that.

And so there is going to be a very large fight, I expect, between the priorities of the two chambers, also members, between members within the two chambers, over how this sum of money is going to be spent, divvied out, and also how much is going to be set aside and saved. We've seen a lot of proposals already, but the Lieutenant Governor has put out what he wants to do with much of it, not all of it, including $15 billion for property tax cuts we have not seen the the house come out with their priority slates yet um but i i would venture to say that a sizable number

of the 30 bills in the senate that are reserved and the 20 bills in the house that are reserved are going to deal with that sum of money and how it's attributed. Absolutely. Matt, what about you? What are your thoughts there, and what's different this legislative session? Well, I recently did a story about the new dynamics in the Texas Senate. A lot of interesting new changes on how the upper chamber is going to operate this session as opposed to last. For one, the Republican caucus grew by a vote, so they've gone up from 18 to 19 votes, so they can comfortably bring a bill to the floor.

And another thing that I think is interesting is that the caucus itself has become much more friendly or allied with the lieutenant governor. We saw in the past a moderate Republican senator from West Texas, Kel Seliger, would sometimes not exactly be on board with everything. We saw Lieutenant Governor Patrick back, newly elected Senator Kevin Sparks for that position. You saw former President Donald Trump come in, issue an endorsement in that race. Ultimately, Seliger did not run for re-election. Sparks won. So you saw not only the Republican caucus grow, but become much more unified, I would

say, around the Lieutenant Governor. Absolutely. Hayden, we'll go to you next. When the session began in 2021 and we were coming to and from the Capitol, there were state troopers, National Guardsmen at the Capitol guarding after the January 6th riot at the United States Capitol. And there was a tent outside where people had to go to get tested for COVID before they entered our state's capital. And it very much had the feel of a time of crisis. And we were coming out of the pandemic. We were still in the pandemic.

And people were anxious. And policy was informed by a lot of that anxiety. This time, I think the discussion is going to center on the values that should guide our state as we go into this new era after the pandemic, because many things are different. So our lawmakers have a chance now to make some of these decisions without that urgency hanging over them of being in the middle of a pandemic and trying to address all of this social unrest that was happening during that time. But also another aspect of this legislative session is it seems that another generation of public servants, of lawmakers, is coming up. Some of the members of this freshman class are not much older than I am.

They are being elected and they're being trained by both political parties to be policy leaders for their respective political parties. And I think it will be informative to see how these younger lawmakers handle these policy issues differently than past legislatures have handled them. I'm saving the best for last here with these two ladies. So folks, we're going to get to your questions right after they answer this. Holly, what are you watching that's a little bit different this legislative session? Well, I don't directly cover legislatures.

I'm not on the scene, as it were, with these guys, which they do a great job. But I am really interested to see this year what happens with the education issue. I don't think after probably two decades of watching Texas politics and those advocating for some kind of school choice program, I don't think I've ever seen this much momentum behind it, and I've never seen such strong pronouncements from the governor and the lieutenant governor. So I think that probably this year we may see something. What that turns out to be is very uncertain. You know, there's a wide array of possible programs that could be enacted. But I think that'll be very interesting to watch. And then, of course,

being from the Houston-Harris County area, we're very interested to see what additional steps the state will take regarding criminal justice reform. I know that in your previous panel, some of your rural areas, they're not as concerned. It's a huge concern in Houston. As Maize Middleton mentioned, we're losing population in the city of Houston, and that's largely due to the problem of crime, rising crime in that area. Kim Roberts, coming to you. So recently, the big city mayors, I don't know, the big city mayors of the state, which are like 13 cities across the state, the largest cities, released their legislative agenda. And so I'm curious to see how that will progress through the legislature. Because one of their biggest issues that they emphasized was fighting against anything they perceive as a removal of local control.

Sort of how everyone defines local control and removing local control can be quite different. But that is one of their big issues, fighting against anything they perceive that way. And then also fighting for programs that they want funded in their cities and counties. So I So be curious to see how the big city mayor's legislative agenda progresses. Wonderful. Thank you folks. Okay let's go to an audience question. Yep sorry. My name is Tom Glass and I head a group called Texas Constitutional Enforcement and one of the issues we're focused on is how are we going to get to solve the problem that the Court of Criminal Appeals tossed at us last time in State v.

Stevenson, which said the attorney general cannot be delegated power to independently prosecute in Texas. They said it has to be done out of the judiciary somehow or through the judiciary's structure of the constitution. And we've heard in the last panel, we heard that one thing we were talking about is having the AG bash on district attorneys if they don't do it. We've all had another bill filed that says adjacent county district attorneys can prosecute in the adjacent county. But I'm looking for a statewide prosecuting official that has limited subject matter jurisdiction in stuff like abortion, election integrity, border security, riot, sedition, official oppression, public integrity type stuff. And I'm looking for somebody who wants to champion that approach. And I wanted to see if you guys know of anybody who is championing a statewide independent prosecutorial office.

Hayden has covered this issue quite extensively. Why don't we pivot to you on that question specifically? That's an excellent question. And the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, for those who are not aware, made a decision in December 2021 that it is a violation of the Texas Constitution for the Attorney General to prosecute election fraud on his own, or any crime under the election code for that matter. In response, lawmakers have filed legislation that would work around that, and I would encourage all of y'all to stick around for our election integrity panel, which is at 3 p.m. And we will be visiting with

some lawmakers, including Representative Briscoe Cain, who was at the helm of these discussions in 2021, for their perspective on what should be the legislature's response to that. With respect to a statewide prosecutor, that would also be a question for the legislature to address. And I think it will be interesting to hear what our election integrity panel has to say on that topic. Certainly. Thank you for your question. Next question. Hello, my name is Dave Wilson. I want to say that I've been a proud subscriber since the beginning. And I wanted to ask you, with regards to the growth of the Texan, and how has that affected your access to the people you need to speak to, to bring information to conservative subscribers? That's a great

question. Guys, we get to talk about ourselves. Look at that. I'd say one of the biggest things that we've noticed is when you launch a company, I mean, several of us are former staffers. Staffers are very protective of their bosses, and for good reason. You want to protect their time. As we've had more work kind of come to the forefront, we broke stories. Our reporters have done their work and proved themselves to be incredible. I think there's just been so much more access that's been granted our team. And that's just been a big blessing. Our subscriber count grows month to month. We were so fortunate in COVID, even when it was so difficult financially for so many businesses and understandably so to actually see growth in our business. And that was a huge blessing as well.

So even just in terms of our reporting, our bandwidth, I mean, you see here, this is a much bigger team than we started with. So we're excited to continue to see that growth, Brad. I know you have something to add. I started at this job 15 days before we launched in 2019. A lot has happened since then. One thing that I always look back on and laugh at was when we started, our name is, of course, the Texan. Whenever I'd call a state rep, state representative's office, or a local official's office, I'd say,

Hi, my name is Brad Johnson. I'm a reporter with the Texan and almost without exception they'd go the daily Texan at UT I don't get that anymore and I think that shows how far we've come building an actual brand and all credit for that goes to former Senator Connie Burton back there. Without her and her husband Phil putting their money where their mouth is, this wouldn't be a thing. And none of us would have jobs, at least doing this. And we wouldn't have separated ourselves from the Daily Texan. So it's a good question, and it causes me to pause for reflection a lot doing this job,

especially since I was here at the beginning with Mackenzie, and just how different things are now. I will say also, the only reason, aside from Connie and Phil's investment in this company, that we're able to do what we do is because of our subscribers. So we're so grateful for those of you who are subscribers in the room. That's why we don't have advertisers. We aren't beholden to big donors. It's just our business model is very special in that way. And so we're very grateful for you and your support each and every month. Okay, anything to add before I move on there? I would like to make one point.

As the saying goes, you know, the proof is in the pudding. And I think that our standards of journalistic ethics and integrity that we really strive for and our product shows, and as our reputation grows and people become how we handle things and everything like that that that has a big impact on being able to access a lawmaker or official that sort of stuff knowing that they're going to be what they say and their viewpoints are going to be portrayed fairly and accurately certainly trust is a big part of that okay do we have another question

hi terry hall with texas turf and i first want to give a shout out to you and your reporters Certainly trust is a big part of that. Okay, do we have another question? Hi, Terry Hall with Texas Turf. And I first want to give a shout out to you and your reporters. I go to give talks all over the state about transportation related things. And I'm telling you what, you guys kill it when it comes to transportation reporting. No other outlet is doing it. And I say that to all the crowds I'm talking to. I said, you need to be a subscriber to the Texan because you're not getting this information from any place else. So first of all, attaboy, shout out to everybody up there, especially Holly and Kim, who've done a lot on transportation for the Texans.

So yay for that. But I also had a question. I don't know, you know, with transportation now being mentioned, or at least infrastructure being mentioned by the Lieutenant Governor and the Governor in their inaugural speeches, and I assume it'll probably be in Abbott's state address somewhere. Where do you see that emphasis going? Is it just a matter of throwing more money at it? Is it water? Is it roads? What is it used for? And I want to thank Holly for her article last week that really helped us get the word out on things that we've been talking about, which are these climate plans. You did it on Harris County's climate plan and what this means is that it's a threat to our freedom to travel into roads. And so we're really leery about just handing money to these big urban areas because it's not going to be spent on roads. It's going to be spent on sidewalks, shrinking

roads, putting in green space and doing Pete Buttigieg, reconnecting communities, roads are racist kind of policy and so we're just curious if you guys are going to delve into that you're going to follow that we we are desperate for good transportation reporting we'd love to know what y'all are going to do with that certainly we'll go with um Kim to start us off here well the urban areas want infrastructure money for sure so that's something to watch like I was talking about the big city mayors they're there that was one of their priorities, their legislative agenda. Also, if you're not familiar with councils of government, in North Texas we have the Regional Transportation Council.

And they deal a lot with transportation infrastructure. And they fly under the radar a lot of times. We report on them regularly. But it's not reported on regularly in a lot of times. We report on them regularly, but it's not reported on regularly in a lot of media outlets. So I think that those are, thank you so much for your comments. And we try to bring those kinds of issues to light. And I would say, yeah, it will be an issue that comes up quite a bit, especially with regard to the urban areas. Particularly from a taxpayer angle too. I think that's one thing that we try to emphasize in our reporting is for these projects, how much will they cost?

Even putting those numbers in headlines and making sure folks are aware of the cost of these kinds of projects, whatever they might be. But I think that's a big part of our reporting. Brad, I know you had something to add. I mentioned the budget surplus earlier, and all of the big three have talked about spending some chunk of money from that on infrastructure. The Speaker of the House specifically mentioned roads. So that is on his mind, as I'm sure it is on Governor Abbott's and Lieutenant Governor Patrick's. But also, there's been a lot of discussion about water infrastructure. The state is running out of water at the current pace,

unless something changes. And one of the stories that I found really interesting, it was kind of odd, it's the Marvin Nichols Reservoir up in northeast Texas. And there's this fight between two regions of the state, that deep east part and then the DFW area. And there's a proposal to put this reservoir in that east region

and have most of the water supply go to Dallas. And it hasn't gone anywhere for 20, 30 years because there is this massive fight between these two local areas. How the state bridges that gap, I have no idea. But it is something that they're going to have to do, and it sounds like they're going to have to do, and it sounds like they're going to throw some money at it. Another smaller story on this, water desalination plants in the Gulf, those are in development.

There are currently five just in Corpus Christi that are seeking permit approval. I imagine some money going towards that, at least maybe more broadly, in terms of giving money to ports, which are going to have a big lobbying effort to get some of this money as well. And they are, at least two of those ports that I mentioned in Corpus, or two of those desalination plants in Corpus

are the product of the Port of Corpus Christ or two of those desalination plants in Corpus, are the product of the Port of Corpus Christi. So there's a lot of different avenues that this money is going to be doled out in for different purposes. Certainly. Holly, you were shouted out there in that question. Do you have anything to add on that particular topic? Just that all of these issues pertain to Houston and Harris County. There was also a fight in the Houston area over water supply, and they had conflict with the neighboring community. And it was tied up in litigation for years because Houston held the rights. But that's a good question is what is the state's role in coming in and looking at how the local authority is exerted over these projects. Also, in Harris County, you know, they were awarded basically billions of dollars to do the I-45 expansion project. And then that, too, was tied up in litigation.

Now, they've come to kind of a stale, not a stalemate, but a detente, if you will, where they are working out some details and hopefully able to move forward with the project. But in the interim, while there was this conflict going on over whether or not we're going to expand I-45 or narrow it down and add bike and pedestrian lanes, the costs accelerated. They ballooned tremendously. So even though, yes, we have this amazing surplus this this year we also are coping with record inflation uh you know highest inflation and i forget how many decades you know which is a cause of the record surplus or one of them exactly so yes very exciting it sounds like you know we're all going to have a big party with these billions of dollars but we also have much higher costs than we had

just three years ago and that's that's going to be a factor, I think, in all of these projects. Spending caps, all sorts of delightful things to figure out. Okay, next question. McKenzie, my name is Bob Green. I'm a precinct chair and an election judge here in Travis County. I'm also chair of our Travis County Republican Party Election Integrity Committee. I've got a question to throw out that I started to broach during the break, but wanted to know if people are willing to step up and answer the question about

how they feel about Dade failing to have a vote on whether or not to have Democrat chairs. Certainly. Well, we will certainly talk about the logistics of that vote, and it was fascinating from that perspective. I know we had several of y'all on the floor watching all of that go down. So we're glad to talk about that. Hayden, why don't we start with you about some behind the scenes of all of that? That whole day with the banned Democrat committee chairs was on the floor.

Well, you're certainly correct that that was a heated topic on the first day of session, and it was the center of the race for Texas House Speaker. Representative Tony Tenderholt sought to garner support, and one of his issues was during the last legislative session, Speaker Phelan did appoint a number of Democrats to lead committee chairs. But on the day of session, it was a short and sweet contest. Representative Tenderholt made a speech in favor of his own candidacy. There were nominating speeches. We heard from Representative Schatzlein earlier today. He spoke in favor of Representative Tenderholt, and Representative Slayton did as well. But it was a relatively brief speaker's race, and Speaker Phelan overwhelmingly won the support of Republicans. And there are various perspectives on the Democrat chair issue. Some believe that it is a sign of cooperation in the Texas House, and that it sets Austin apart from D.C. in that Republicans and Democrats are able to work together on some issues. On the other hand, there are Republicans, grassroots

conservatives, who believe that it is a betrayal of what they spoke at the ballot box, which was to advance conservative priorities at the Capitol, which is what Republican primary voters support. So at the end of the speaker's race, it was clear from the Republican caucus and the chamber overall that they were going to continue in the direction that Speaker Phelan led the chamber during the last legislative session. And that will certainly also be a topic of conversation in the Senate. There have been that spirit speaker feel and led the chamber during the last legislative session and that will certainly also be a topic of conversation in the senate there have been a couple of things in the last few days that have specifically centered around the one democrat committee chair appointed in the senate we will have lieutenant governor dan patrick with us later on this evening so we

may have an answer on how the senate decides to approach that issue So stay tuned for that as well. Okay, next question. Hello, my name is Teresa Thomas, and I do want to give kudos to our representative, as I call her, Ms. Holly Hansen. And I was first introduced to the Texan by, we'll just call him Don. He said, with what you're working on in school advocacy, you can trust her. And of course, the media has attacked us repeatedly for trying to do what we do to improve schools. So I want to thank you for that, Holly. But my question is for Matt. I lived in West Texas for many years, and that is where I started my school advocacy for school choice. It was there 35 years ago I realized those schools were underperforming. We had to drive an hour to get to anywhere, even if you had the money

to pay for private school. I also have many friends from rural Texas that have the narrative, they're crying out for choice. And yet I'm hearing that they're going to be carved out. That concerns me. These parents need relief just like the rest of the state of Texas. So my question is, will the Texans do investigative reports on the true will of the people for rural Texas? All of them voted for school choice. Well, thank you for the question. We actually did a story recently about the Ector County Independent School District in Odessa

that released a legislative priorities agenda to lobby the legislature this session, and one of the issues was to oppose school vouchers, school choice in any fashion, shape, or form. In our report on that, we noted that Exeter County, where the district lies, is an overwhelmingly Republican electorate, pretty much. The March primary is the general election. Who comes out with the Republican nomination wins. There really isn't a challenge in all the local offices in that November race. So we were able to go pull the data from the

Ector County Elections Office and show on the Republican propositions back in March an overwhelming percentage of the electorate in that county that turned out in the recent primary voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition, supporting some form of school choice this session. So we were able to show that the position of the district doesn't necessarily reflect the electorate there from the best data that we have available. Being from West Texas and a bit of a political walk out there looking at all the different counties and everything like that, I'm not aware of very many counties that voted against that proposition. And that's actually something that we're going to be looking at in the near future

as you have more and more districts announcing legislative priorities to lobby against that, checking and seeing whether or not it's fair to look at those primary proposition results and compare and contrast how those districts are lobbying as opposed to what the wishes of their voters are. That's a great question. Yes, thank you so much. Okay, next question. Hi, my name is Angela Smith, and I'm with the Fredericksburg Tea Party out in the Hill Country. And we are working on all of the different issues. We've got focus groups that have begun there, and they're hitting on education, sanctity of life, et cetera. My question for you guys is that from my viewpoint, the most alarming is the border. We have a porous border. We are starting to see panhandlers in the Hill Country at the Walmart there. I think we're seeing them in Kerr County out in Kerrville. We've now just most recently see Sheriff Coe send out a letter to sheriffs asking for help. I am just wondering, when is Texas going to stop this?

Great question. I'll direct it to our border reporter, Hayden Sparks. There is a debate about how far Governor Abbott can and should go to confront illegal immigration in Texas. And you're touching on another great panel that we're going to have here in a little bit. At one o'clock, we're going to have our border security panel. That will be right before the election integrity panel at 2 o'clock, and we'll be discussing that issue with some lawmakers. But at this point, there are those who believe that Governor Abbott should take it a step further and begin expelling or deporting is not quite the right word, but turn away, send back

illegal immigrants to the other side of the border. And there is a debate about whether that is a violation of the U.S. Constitution or if it is in line with what the Constitution says about how states are supposed to respond when we are being invaded. And the word invasion has now been introduced into this debate by jurisdictions along the border who believe, as you're highlighting, that because people cannot go outside their own homes and feel safe, that Texas is being invaded and that Governor Abbott should invoke those provisions and use the force of the Texas military to turn them away. But then there are also those who believe that this is a federal responsibility and that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas

are entitled to enact their policy agenda. So we'll be going over all of that at our border security panel. And I would encourage all of you to stay with us to hear what our panelists have to say on that topic. Absolutely. Okay, if my eyes and intel are correct, we have one more person in line. Go ahead and ask your question. in Central Texas. And this question, I know we've already had the education panel this morning, but I've recently learned as a lawyer that this CRT, emotional learning, all these new equity, diversity, all that is probably violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 based on discrimination and that these policies have shown that they do not work and that the party being discriminated against tends to get resentful and it really makes it worse. As an attorney in the state of Texas, I am regulated by the state bar, which is run by directors that are elected across the state.

And they, along with many state agencies, including the Texas Medical Association, are pushing these woke agendas. And I'm wondering if y'all have had a chance to address that. And if not, would you address that? I'm going to pivot that to Holly and Kim here to answer this question. You've both done a lot of reporting on these specific issues. Holly, we'll start with you. What would be some insight you'd provide to a question like that? That's a tough question to answer. You know, the state did enact some legislation to address CRT, as it's known, in our public schools. One thing that I've learned over the, you know, past few months is that within the education code, there's not a lot of

enforcement mechanism. So, you know, you can pass these things, but, you know, how do you get down into the, you know, nitty gritty, the daily little details, and how do you really, you know, can you ban discussions that are related to critical race theory? You know, that's really difficult to go in and say you can't talk about X or Y from a legislative position, right? So, you know, the state can say, well, you can't talk about that. You're not going to go into every classroom and prohibit every teacher from discussing, you know, issues that come up in the classroom, particularly in the high school level. I think it's a challenging area of policy. You know, I think that probably, you know, you have a clearer path forward when you're talking about the sexually explicit material, especially

with the younger students. But as, you know, we're looking at that policy, I don't have the answers. I'm not a legislator. And, you know, I think some of the legislators are struggling with how to craft policy to address these things. And there are multiple viewpoints about the history of racism and how do we talk about it in a way that doesn't perpetuate racism. So that's not really an answer, but yes, we're watching it, and we're interested to see what the state does on these issues. Kim, anything to add? Yes, we report regularly on diversity, equity, inclusion, those kinds of policies. In fact, you mentioned the medical community. We had a story last week about a lawsuit where six medical schools were sued for violating Title IX, I think,

for civil rights violations for discrimination in their admissions policies. So if you haven't read that article, I would recommend it. And then we also wrote one, it just came out today, about a hospital and their DEI policies and training and how that's affecting or not affecting health care. So those are issues we're looking at. I am also a member of the state bar, so we could chat about looking into what's going on there and be happy to see if there's a report there we could do. Wonderful.

Thank you so much. Okay, I know we have one more question. This will be our last question before we break for lunch. Hi, my name is Bill Aylshire. I'm an attorney here in Austin and a subscriber since 2020. Correct me if I've got this wrong, but I understand the Senate rules barred members of the press from being on the floor. And according to a note that I got from my state senator, where the House stills allow it. So my question is, if that's correct, how do you think that might affect your job of covering the Senate? And how do you think that might affect the senator's ability to pay more attention to what's going on the floor instead of to the media. Insider question. I like it.

Matt, we're going to pivot to our Senate reporter here on stage. Filibuster. That's a good question. You know, this is my first session covering the Texas Senate. So I don't have previous sessions that I can point to experience-wise. Obviously, the general regard is having the press close by helps bring accountability and helps get access quicker to essential information. It is an interesting comparison, though, because in the House, our House reporters have full access to the regular press areas,

whereas this session, it's looking like we will be up in the gallery with everybody else this session. So it's really not something that I can speak to from experience in the past how it will impact. It's something that I'm going to learn and experience going forward. But, you know, obviously, I think most everybody I've talked to, my colleagues, you know, most everybody that works in media, you know, is hoping that that standard is returned to the norm

and we're able to access the Senate floor. And that's about all I can think of on that. It'll just be something that we'll have to look at the effects going forward. Yeah. Bradley? Just to provide a point of comparison from the House, the thing that I find being on the floor advantages most is seeing the reactions when things are going down, such as during the House Rules fight.

Representative Tenderholt and Slayton could be seen pacing back and forth on their phone trying to figure out a strategy of how to combat the parliamentary maneuver that leadership used. And so I've not been on the Senate floor either.

That generally is a less chaotic body. The House is, I like to say the phrase, like herding cats. A lot of stuff happens in a quick amount of time, and the Senate is just not like that generally. I think you probably make a pretty good point. I think being on the floor and being able to see what's going on and everything like that, there's probably some background issues on, you know, who's working with who, what's being said, et cetera, like that, that you probably would be deprived of having that, which really helps inform the people of the full background of how the policy came to be.

Awesome. I'm going to cut us off there because we are already four minutes into lunch and I can sense the hunger. Folks, 1 p.m., we have our Border Security and Immigration panel. It will be hosted by and moderated by Hayden Sparks. Make sure to be back for that. There is a cafe next door as well as options within walking distance that should have been in your FAQ email you received from our team thank you so much and we'll see you in an hour thank you all so much for listening if you've been enjoying our podcast it would be awesome if you would review us on itunes and if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show give us a shout on twitter tweet at the texan news we're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation.

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